State v. Chase
| Decision Date | 28 July 1896 |
| Parties | STATE v. CHASE. |
| Court | Vermont Supreme Court |
Exceptions from Orleans county court; Laforrest H. Thompson, Judge.
William Chase was tried for murder, and convicted of manslaughter, and brings exceptions. Exceptions overruled.
C. S. Annis, State's Arty. W. W. Miles, for respondent.
This is an indictment for the murder of John E. Holloway by poison on March 9, 1895. All the exceptions now relied upon except two relate to the admission of testimony concerning the relations that existed between the prisoner and Holloway's wife before and at the time of the homicide, and to their relations with the deceased during the same time. This testimony commenced with the prisoner's first acquaintance with Mrs. Holloway at the Barton fair in the fall of 1894, and traced them step by step from that time till the homicide. It showed how their intimacy sprang up; how it grew and increased by the things it fed on, until it became and continued to be adulterous; how, in course of time, and on several occasions, they together tried to induce the deceased to agree to a separation between him and his wife, and a division of the property, which, two days before the homicide, he refused to do on terms as to property satisfactory to them. It showed that the deceased was largely cognizant of how things were going on between the prisoner and his wife, whereat he was much displeased; that frequent quarrels took place between him and them concerning it, in some of which the prisoner inflicted blows upon him. It strongly tended to show that the prisoner had a consuming passion for the woman, and so desired to possess and enjoy her that he determined to overcome all obstacles that stood in the way of it; and that, as her husband was the chief obstacle, and could not be otherwise removed, he slew him. Some of the testimony, standing alone, might not have been admissible; but when it is all reviewed together, as it must be, each part is so closely and naturally connected with every other part, and so explains and characterizes what might otherwise have been equivocal or indifferent, that all was properly and logically framed together, and constituted a harmonious whole, with the tendency indicated, and some of it also tended to show malice on the part of the prisoner towards the deceased. The main ground urged against its admissibility is that it was not competent to show an adulterous intercourse between the prisoner and the...
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